Part 2: The value of a digital employee experience

In the first blog post, we focused on the value that a good digital employee experience can create. It's about better productivity and efficiency, better employee well-being and increased engagement. And that the basis for achieving this is to have a clear strategy. We divided the strategy into three categories: people, ways of working and technology.

Now it's time to take a closer look at what you and your colleagues can do to create these values through a great employee experience – and we use the same three categories.

People – engaged employees

We start with the people and how you can think about engaging your employees.

Invite and involve

Encourage your employees to contribute with communication, information and news on the intranet. With ready-made templates and some support from editors, anyone in your organization can be active in internal communication. Your colleagues will feel engaged. And did you know that organizations with highly engaged employees are 13-18% more productive?

Involve new colleagues early on in internal communication. And remember management too. Demand and help management to be active and visible in the digital workplace. If they are, others will follow.

The digital workplace needs more faces than internal communicators. It also saves you time - with a user-friendly interface that allows more people to communicate easily in the digital workplace, an internal communicator saves three hours a week.

Map the lifecycle

Map the entire employee lifecycle. You remember: from the first contact to the last day of work. But what does that journey look like in your organization? Find out, so you can understand the needs of all your employees and create the best digital experience possible. And it will be even better, easier, and more fun to do this if you involve IT, HR, and other departments to drive the work forward together.

Distribute responsibilities and use ambassadors

The role of ambassadors is to advocate for the needs of the end user, but they should also inform, advise and guide them when necessary. A good idea is to create a pilot group consisting of different roles in the organization. Their task will be to analyse the impact of the digital features, such as the benefits and concerns and what you need to optimize.

Why should you do this? Well, improved usability can only be achieved if you put your people and their needs at the center.

Way of working – more efficient and productive way of working

Let's continue with three tips on how working practices can help you achieve the goal of simplifying your work and that of your colleagues.

Feedback

Encourage colleagues to provide regular feedback and then use it to improve the digital employee experience. After all, your employees are the ones with the solutions.

Educate

Have digital solutions become more intuitive? Yes! And most of us are also more tech-savvy than just five years ago. But no, we don't understand everything at once. Without proper training at the start, there is a risk that your employees will not be able to navigate the new applications and will not use them. Set aside time for training and offer different types of training formats for different needs and skills.

Make it easy to find the right one

Remember to always sharpen the search function. Aim for the intranet to be the "single source of truth", where all information should be gathered. Even then, you have come a long way. Find out what your employees are looking for on the intranet to optimize and shorten the search paths. According to our study, an office worker saves 30 minutes a week by easily finding their way around the digital workplace. If your employee works in the field, they will save one hour a week.

Technology – creativity and innovation

Last up is technology. These four tips will help you achieve the goal of finding improvements, new solutions and new features in your organization.

Measure, monitor and improve

Find a way to regularly measure, monitor and improve. By accurately measuring user behavior on an intranet, you can improve the digital employee experience. Set targets and milestones – and activities to achieve them.

Also, take advantage of other measurements already in place in your organization. Probably you are doing an employee survey? Their results can be useful in improving the digital employee experience.

Reduce the number of systems

During the pandemic, many people invested in several different collaboration systems. It quickly became apparent that multiple systems contribute to a lot of frustration. Use one platform to streamline communication.

Your organization will have a central place to gather knowledge and documents – and you can also build bridges to other platforms and systems such as knowledge banks and external customer and citizen platforms.

It will pay off. Our actual working time creating value is 2.53 minutes per day. The rest is spent in meetings, searching for information, recreating material and just that: switching between tools ...

Personalize

Did you read about the personalization engine in my first post? The right information, to the right employee, in the right device, at the right time. Generative AI is the key. But make sure to prioritize features that really help your employees, not just impress them.

Think mobile first

Adapt all digital features to be mobile-friendly. Imagine how often we sit with our mobiles – and the goal is of course to make the digital experience at work as good as the one outside of work.

Conclusion

I hope that after reading these two blog posts, you have a clear strategy on how to create a powerful digital employee experience and the value it brings.

How can be summarized in ten points:

1. Invite and engage your employees to contribute with communication, information and news on the intranet.
2. Map your employee's entire life cycle
3. Distribute responsibilities and use ambassadors
4. Open up to feedback from colleagues and use it to improve the employee experience.
5. Provide training
6. Make it easy to find the right one
7. Measure, monitor and improve
8. Reduce the number of systems
9. Personalize
10. Think mobile first
    

And this is the value your organization gets:

People

• Engaged employees
• Improved internal communication
• Better organizational culture
• Reduced staff turnover
• Attracting new talent

Way of working

• Simpler and more efficient work
• More productive colleagues
• Improved experience and satisfaction of customers, citizens and members

Technology

• Increased collaboration across internal departments
• Better knowledge sharing
• Encouragement of innovation

At Sitevision, we will continue to talk about the digital employee experience in the future – stay tuned!

If you have any questions or are just curious about how to achieve a great digital employee experience, don't hesitate to get in touch. Email me at katarina.bonde@sitevision.se or write to me on Linkedin External link..